Haiti Mission Trip: Day 2

Sunday:

We woke up around 5:30 to get ready for church. Once we were ready we ate fruit and toast while doing our daily devotionals. It was a special day because eighteen boys and girls and two men were being baptized in the ocean before church! We loaded up in trucks and made the short trip to the ocean.

 

There was some singing that we didn’t understand, and then the people were baptized three at a time in the ocean.

 After all of the baptisms the men stood in the water and prayed together.

 It was my first experience seeing so many people baptized at once and seeing people baptized in the ocean! It was a really neat experience, but sort of strange to have a baptism where people were enjoying the beach and bathing in the water not too far away!

 After the baptisms we headed on to the church. We were there about an hour before church started, so we sat and had time to talk until then. This time the service was in Creole, so we didn’t understand much of it.

 There were several different groups that sang and we knew a few of the songs. Even so, it was difficult to remember the words that I thought I knew so well when they were singing in a different language! 

 

 We were able to enjoy communion with the rest of the church with bread and real wine. The whole service lasted nearly three hours, and in our exhaustion most of us may have dozed a bit during some of the prayers- oops!

After church we went back to the compound for lunch. We had fried chicken, delicious Haitian slaw, and seriously the best French fries I've ever had!

Half of the kids left for camp, but we were able to go back to the ocean with the rest of the kids after lunch.

 The ocean was very calm and we swam and played. The kids really opened up to us at the beach and it was neat to see the walls fall down. They loved being pulled around in the water, being thrown, and chicken fighting.

 

After the beach we went back to the compound to clean up and play until dinner. Some of our girls got to help cook! Since there weren’t as many kids we were able to eat a yummy pasta at their tables with them. We played some more after dinner and were exhausted by bedtime from a long day!

 

 

(By the way, most of these beautiful photos were taken by Mrs. Tanya!)

Haiti Mission Trip: Day 1

Saturday:

When we arrived in Grand Goave we went straight to the compound. It had high walls which were either topped with broken bottles or with razor wire all around. There was also a guard who stood at the door to keep up with which kids went out and where they were going.  When we got there all 31 kids (ages 10ish-17) were there. Half would leave on Sunday to go to camp in Jacmel.

compound walls and some of the ladies

 We expected the kids to be very excited to see us, since we were so excited to see them. But our greeting really wasn’t very warm. Who can blame them with a new group coming in every week over the summer? Several kids helped us to get our luggage to our rooms. The girls and the guys each had a place to stay with 4 bunk beds, a toilet, a sink, and a shower. We were so thankful to see a toilet and a shower there (but flushing TP was a no-no!) because we were prepared for, well, other things. The language barrier was difficult at first. Most of the kids understood some English, but some would not try to use it to speak to us. We settled in and played some with the kids and chatted with the missionaries that work at H&F.

Here's a little picture tour of the compound!

bedroom

 

where we met and ate our meals



playground, rock wall, and the well/water tower

soccer field

 

our favorite place to sit and talk

missionary house on the left, kids' showers on the right

kids' bathrooms

basketball court

kitchen

monkey bars the guys installed between the boys' rooms

 We ate spaghetti for dinner and it was very good! The Haitian sauce is a little oilier than American spaghetti sauce and it had onions in it.

After dinner we were playing with the kids when we were told we were leaving for church in fifteen minutes! They canceled the English-speaking service on Sunday because of a conference going on, but they had one on Saturday night. The church was close by, but we rode in the truck anyway. We fit ten adults and one child in the back of the pickup- all sitting! The church building is temporary and is made of wood posts and a tin roof. To enclose the building they used lots of beautiful curtains. It really gave the building a neat feel. Haitian people seem to have a gift to turn plain things into beautiful things. The service was mostly in English with a Haitian translator. They sang some songs we knew and we were still able to sing along when they sang in Creole!

outside the church

 

 After church we met with our team for a bit before time to get ready for bed. Not long after we got to our rooms it started to rain. It was super loud on our tin roofs, and we couldn’t even talk to one another over the sound! We were all exhausted after a long day of traveling and exploring, so we were ready to get to bed anyway.

Haiti Mission Trip: Traveling

Haiti mission trip: July 5-13, 2013

This series of posts is mostly for our memory, but I'm going to break them up into days so it's not so much to read in case you are interested in our trip!

 

This was our first mission trip out of the country, and we were chaperones. gulp. Thankfully we had a great group, and knew we wouldn’t have any problems from them! There were five high school students: Emily, Madison, Tyler, Maygan, and Austin, two recent high school grads: Josh and Scott, three college students: Katie, Hannah Lee, and Kevin, and Mrs. Tanya, Josh, Leslie, and myself.

We left for New Orleans on Friday night on a BCM bus so that we could catch our flight early the next morning. We were all excited that this week had finally gotten here after planning this trip for nine months! We went to dinner together at Acme Oyster House and stayed at the Baptist Theological Seminary.

On Saturday we woke up at 2:30 am to get to the airport with plenty of time before our flight. We flew from New Orleans to Miami and then from Miami to Port Au Prince, Haiti. We were in first class for both flights, and we were definitely spoiled! I’d never gotten a meal on a flight or had seats that go to “sleep” position. Both flights were about two hours long and were easy flights. We had three students with us that had never flown before, and we warned them not to get used to first class treatment!

Reclining in first class

I had heard a lot of things about Haiti. It was poor, hot, humid, and even dangerous. But no one told me that Haiti is also beautiful. I was surprised flying in to see so many mountains and clear ocean water all in the same place!

Sorry for the bad quality plane photo...

We got off the plane and got through customs relatively easily. I learned quickly that it really does pay to try to learn at least a few words in the language before visiting. We were greeted by the missionaries from the Hands and Feet Project and we all loaded in a van to make the two hour trip to Grand Goave. We rode with the windows open and experienced all of the new sights, sounds, and smells.  We learned quickly that driving is very different in Haiti! There was a lot of honking and passing whenever someone wanted. There were very few personal vehicles, and most people in colorfully decorated “tap taps” (trucks that were built for people to sit in the back of that you tapped if you wanted to get in for a ride) or on small motorcycles. Leslie quickly noticed that there are very few road signs there, so you better know where you’re going!

Tap tap!

We drove through towns where there were marketplaces and many people walking through the streets trying to sell things. While we were stopped people would walk up to the window to try to sell us things. I realized quickly that smiling gave boys the wrong impression after I got some unwanted attention- oops!

 

Goats and chickens were seen everywhere on the side of the road, up in the mountains, and even on the beach later on! They seemed to be everywhere in Haiti.

 

Most of the buildings were colorfully decorated. It seems like everyone there is artistic! On the way there I did not notice too many homes, more stores and marketplaces and scenery. It was overwhelming and wonderful to be in a new place.